Breath is Life Journal

Pranayama and perception

When you think of yourself as a body, you forget that you are a mind, and when you think of yourself as a mind, you easily forget that you are also your body. Isn’t this amazing how we human beings perceive ourselves in such a fragmented manner? But sometimes in life we have those glimpses of unification and then we feel so peaceful and integrated as everything is as it should be.

In yoga we use the breath, the primordial movement of life, enough concealed but almost magically essential in opening the door to more subtle perceptions. Conscious breathing is glueing our fragmented nature into one piece of thing allowing us to perceive we are all at ones. Giving us the opportunity to witness how the body and the mind are nothing else but the same thing, the only difference is its subtlety. 

Pranayama is a tool by which you attain this skill of building up superfine perceptions and it is wise to begin from the gross, more tangible element, for example the rhythmical movement of the breath happening on the level of your ribcage. This experience is taking your further down to a more subtle experience of how a particular breathing pattern can create a balanced state of your nervous system. Having enough stable nervous system supports the state of deep concentration in which you can comfortably become the observer of the experience field happening on the level of your subtle pranic body. At this point human being is able to tap into a reservoir of intuition that is nothing else but the integrated state of all fragmented experiences.

Petra Bianco